


Dork Greatly's Holistic Laundry Service

by obscureenthusiast



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Boys In Love, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Household cleaning would be a lot easier if Dirk Gently stopped talking, Laundry Silliness, M/M, POV Dirk Gently, Schmoop, Todd has Family Feelings about sock puppets?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 19:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11835429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obscureenthusiast/pseuds/obscureenthusiast
Summary: Dirk very generously offers to help Todd with his household chores... an offer which Todd eventually takes him up on. The laundry gets a little out of hand when Todd remembers a game he and Amanda used to play and Dirk enthusiastically joins.





	Dork Greatly's Holistic Laundry Service

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to my friend and beta and all around cool dude who not only got me to watch Dirk Gently, but inspired this silly fic idea and then encouraged me to post it sooooo... Um. I love that guy. <3

Dirk lounged across Todd’s sofa, his head lolling to one side as his bright eyes followed his best friend’s movements. Todd was trying to do housework, he was just finishing up with cleaning the windows, and seemed utterly convinced that Dirk couldn’t possibly help him.

Of course, as Dirk’s assistant, maybe he didn’t quite get the idea that the assisting went both ways?

“Oh!” Dirk said, snapping his fingers and pointing at the carpet, “I could do the vacuuming, I’m _very_ good at that.” He raised his eyebrows at Todd expectantly, adding quickly, “I’ve done that loads of times.”

Todd looked like he was trying not to laugh as he walked past, toting glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels back to the kitchen counter, where the rest of the cleaning supplies were set in orderly lines.

“No, Dirk, it’s fine. Really,” he glanced over his shoulder and said, “if I had known you were coming over I probably would have started cleaning yesterday.”

Dirk grinned and pushed himself into an upright position, planting his feet firmly on the floor as he leaned forward, “ _Buuut_ , now that I’m here, you have an extra pair of hands,” he gestured at Todd as if to showcase the incredible _availability_ of his hands, “and you only have to do half the work!”

Todd smiled, but looked hesitant, “Well…”

Dirk blinked, his chin lowered to give Todd a confused look from beneath furrowed brows. “Todd, you think I can’t clean?”

“No, it’s not that, I-I-” Todd stammered, but his guilty, flustered expression betrayed him.

Dirk laughed, “I am an _adult_ , Todd Brotzman, I know how to use a _vacuum_ ,” he scoffed, smiling at the sheer ridiculousness of the idea.

Todd laughed a little, looking away quickly, “Right, sorry, I just wasn’t sure since your childhood was…”

“British people clean their houses, too, Todd,” Dirk snorted, rolling his eyes. He stood up and bounded over to the kitchen countertop before Todd could take back the permission that he kind of almost not really gave him.

Todd frowned at him for a moment, probably confused by the cultural similarities of British and American children. 

Dirk smiled expectantly, rubbing his hands together, “What do you need me to clean?” he prompted, eyebrows bobbing up and down.

After another half-moment of confused staring, Todd cleared his throat, turning his attention to the to-do list on the counter before him. “Um, most of it’s actually done…”

That did make sense… Dirk had been trying most of the morning to get Todd to let him help. And the shorter man _had_ seemed to make good progress on a number of household chores.

“Can you fold laundry?” Todd asked.

“Can I?” Dirk asked back, grinning.

Todd’s brows furrowed, “I’ll… just grab the basket.”

Dirk nodded once, “Excellent. Look at us!” he gestured at Todd excitedly, “We’re doing _chores_! Working together!” 

Todd laughed, “I’ll be back in a minute, don’t… touch anything. Please.”

Dirk tossed his friend a quick salute, sobering his expression, “Not a finger.”

As Todd left to grab the laundry, Dirk allowed himself a wide smile. He liked helping people… and helping Todd was especially… _likeable_ … 

He would be remiss to not acknowledge his growing affection for Todd. Over the past year he had… become very fond. And he was finding that his greatest daily accomplishments were often the moments he had managed to make his best friend smile. 

Dirk didn’t try to ignore the way a glowing light seemed to weave from his heart to the fluttering nervousness in his stomach whenever Todd _did_ smile at him. 

Ignoring things like that wasn’t something a good detective did. He guessed.

He wandered from the kitchen back to the living room, his eyes drifting to land happily on a framed photo hanging on the wall. One that Farah had snapped while the three had been investigating a case. In it, Todd and Dirk sat side by side on a low wall, neither of them were looking at the camera. Dirk was mid-speech (he seemed to remember talking about something incredibly important to the case, possibly the variations in slug species found in the area or the showtimes for the local theater, which Todd hadn’t replied to and now they’d missed their chance to see the Tempest) and Todd’s full attention was on an old book which lay balanced in his lap. 

Dirk remembered the way their elbows had lightly jostled against each other. The look of concentration that had set itself on Todd’s face and forced a wrinkle to appear between his brows. His assistant’s large blue eyes had brightened at the prospect of a clue he had discovered. Dirk hadn’t been able to contain a smile from bursting onto his face. Of course Todd had been right. 

“Alright, here we go,” Todd said, his voice bringing Dirk back to the present along with the sound of a laundry basket being tossed down on the couch.

Dirk blinked and looked at Todd with a wide smile as he walked over to where his friend was already pulling clothes out and folding them.

Grabbing a t-shirt, Dirk said, grabbing onto a conversation topic at random, “Ha! Laundry. Been around for years, you’d _think_ maybe people would have less of it by now, right?” When Todd only raised his eyebrows, Dirk continued, bobbing his head as his eyes flitted upwards in recollection, “I mean. People have been washing their clothes in rivers forever. And the first clothes dryer has been around since the 1800s and, sure, that design has been _improved_ and now we’ve got all sorts of weird robots dealing with our dirty socks and such but imagine if we dealt with the _source_ of the laundry!” He set the shirt back into the basket and looked at Todd soberly, “If we could create clothes that washed themselves! _That_ would be worth something.”

Todd laughed, looking down into the basket and grabbing out a handful of socks, “Yeah, call me when you get that figured out, I can use all the help I can get.”

Dirk pulled a face, “Yes, but,” he raised an eyebrow, “that’s why I’m here,” he lifted the shirt he was halfway through folding, “helping!”

Todd smiled, “Yeah, thanks for… pitching in. You didn’t have to, Dirk.”

“The least I can do for my best… assistant,” the corners of Dirk’s mouth twitched upward and he added quickly, “best friend.”

Smile growing, Todd looked down into the laundry and didn’t say anything for a second. Then, he laughed and picked up a raggedy-looking sock with a hole in it, saying, “Hey, this one looks like you.”

Dirk frowned in confusion and looked at the… sock that definitely didn’t look anything like him.

Todd was still smiling, though, as he slipped the sock onto his hand. “Amanda and I used to…” he shrugged, “I mean, when we were doing chores as kids, we used to pick out the hairiest, ugliest socks from the laundry and say ‘oh, it looks like you’ and… and use them as puppets.” He shrugged again, “It was always just… little teasing things like,” he lifted the sock and said, in a high falsetto, “‘I’m Salamanda Rotzman and I spill drinks on my brother every other day’,” he laughed, a quick, forced-sounding chuckle, and his eyes cast down to stare into the laundry basket, “It… it was silly.”

Todd went to pull the sock off his hand, but Dirk stopped him, a wide grin on his face, “Ooh, I like it!” he pointed at himself, nodding excitedly, “Do me next!” Before Todd could answer, though, Dirk cut in with, “No! Wait! I want to try.” He dug into the laundry basket, trying to find a sock with an appropriate amount of wear to it.

“Ha!” he grabbed a sock with at least half a dozen loose threads poking out of it and pulled it over his hand, “Now, um…” he looked Todd up and down quickly and then lifted the puppet with as much of a Todd-like expression (that is, wide-eyed and grumpy) as he could muster, “I’m,” he cleared his throat and switched to an American accent (and a very poor one, or so he had been told), “I’m _Todger_ _Brontzman_.”

Dirk was rewarded almost immediately with an eyeroll and a smile from Todd, a sight which encouraged him to continue.

“I play guitar _annnd_ ,” he frowned, thinking hard even as he spoke, “I’m grumpy _all_ the time and I’m tiny, shorter than literally _all_ of my friends, and _I_ don’t like to hug my best friend!”

For a second Todd looked shocked (he almost looked a little embarrassed) before he set his jaw and lifted his own puppet to speak in the _worst_ approximation of a British accent that Dirk had ever heard in his life.

“Well, _I’m_ Dork Greatly,” Todd said (and Dirk definitely grinned at the name “Greatly”. Todd thought he was great) and raised his eyebrows, “and I’m a psychic timetraveling detective who isn’t very good at solving mysteries and who breaks into my best friend’s apartment when he’s _sleeping_ and also has _horrible_ taste in music _and_ never puts the milk back in the fridge!”

Dirk scoffed, “I am _great_ at solving mysteries, thank you! I’m extremely observant!”

Todd lifted the puppet and said, still in that terrible accent, “I’m the _amazing_ Dork Greatly and I once tried to eat the fake fruit from a floral centerpiece.”

Narrowing his eyes, Dirk said (stretching his fake American accent so it sounded even worse), “I’m Todger and I own nothing but band t-shirts in size small!”

Todd snorted, chuckling a little bit as he said, without hesitation, “I’m Dork Greatly and I think I’m just _so cool_ with all my cool jackets in every highlighter color I could find!”

Dirk blinked. He liked his jackets. They _were_ cool jackets. He sniffed and said quickly, tripping somewhat over the accent he was attempting, “I’m Todger Brontzman and I think I can get _anything_ just by blinking my giant baby blue eyes at people!”

“ _I’m_ Dork Greatly and I think pouting at people is a foolproof method of questioning!”

“I’m Todger Brontzman and I _never_ like to hug my best friend even if maybe he really _needs one_.”

“Well maybe I, Dork Greatly,” Todd’s hand swooped to one side in a dramatic gesture as the sock puppet on the other hand was moved even closer to Dirk, “need to understand that my best friend might want to sometimes _initiate_ the hugs.”

Dirk moved a step closer and said, “Well _maybe_ Todger _should_ initiate hugs more often!”

“Maybe he should!”

Dirk blinked, looking down momentarily at the sock puppet as he replied, in the same loud voice, “Good! Because…” he lifted the sock and said, in a more level tone (and without a hint of the bad American accent), “I’m Todger Brontzman and even though I’m a _huge_ softie with the biggest heart, I’m _far_ too worried about showing affection to my best friend despite having been shown on many occasions that he’s… quite fine with it.” When there was a moment too long of hesitation, he added, without any irony, “Also I’m Todger Brontzman and I have to climb on the counter to grab stuff from the top shelf.”

Todd was… smiling but strangely so. He looked halfway caught between laughing and frowning and for a minute Dirk thought Todd would just… Rip the sock off his hand and walk away saying this whole thing was rather ridiculous.

Laughter, though, seemed to win out in the end, because Todd chuckled and said, “Yeah, well. I’m…” he lifted the sock, his eyes drifting slightly so he wasn’t looking directly at Dirk, “I’m Dork Greatly and I’m a big cuddly mess and I’m probably one of the bravest people my best friend knows.”

A smile snuck onto Dirk’s face, but before he could say anything, Todd added, in a flat tone.

“And I can’t drive without scaring Todd half to death and I don’t know what a turn signal is.”

Dirk put a hand over his heart and looked at Todd, aghast (with the smile still tugging at his lips), “Well, _I’m_ Todger Brontzman and like to play guitar so loudly I can’t hear my phone going off and I miss important calls.”

Todd smirked, “Well,” he said (and the bad British accent was back), “ _I’m_ Dork Greatly and I--”

“Hey, guys!” a voice said quite suddenly. 

Dirk’s attention snapped over to the door, where Farah was standing, an ill-disguised smile making its way onto her features.

“Farah!” Todd’s voice broke as he jumped in surprise, hiding the sock puppet behind his back as he stammered, “Um, hi!”

Farah looked at Dirk, who was still holding his sock puppet in full view, “I’m not… interrupting anything I hope?”

“No, no we were just, uh,” Todd chuckled a little, shrugging, “messing around, um, how did you get in?”

She raised her eyebrows and gestured behind her, “The door was open.”

Todd’s eyes shut and he nodded, “Right. I… I must not have closed it all the way when I… came back with the laundry.”

Farah smirked a little, taking a few steps closer, “Too busy… messing around?” she said, teasing.

Dirk grinned and said, matter-of-factly, “Todd and I were expressing ourselves with sock puppets! Loads of fun, actually. It’s like having a conversation but,” he furrowed his brows in thought, then finished, “Backwards.”

For a second Farah just smiled, nodding as if she understood perfectly, “Riiiight,” she said (her tone suggesting that her understanding was… not as perfect as her confident nodding had made it seem), “I’m not sure which is worse. The fact that I’ve seen you two do weirder things together, or the fact that _we’ve_ done weirder things together,” she wandered over to the basket and grabbed a sock to waggle in front of Todd teasingly, “Dirk playing with your socks doesn’t make the top five.”

Todd snatched the sock away from Farah, a pink color tinging his cheeks as he looked away, “We weren’t…” he tossed the sock into the basket with the hand that was wearing the sock puppet. He seemed to realize this after a moment and quickly stripped the sock from his wrist.

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Farah,” Dirk said helpfully, still wearing his sock puppet proudly. 

Todd rolled his eyes, his face turning redder, “It wasn’t like… we weren’t _playing_ with laundry we were just-”

“Making fun of each other?” Farah offered, the hint of a giggle sneaking into her voice.

Dirk grinned wider, leaning over the laundry basket, “Todd! We can do Farah next!”

Todd gave Dirk a look, “We’re not doing that.”

Farah raised her eyebrows, “Doing what?”

“Dirk, don’t-”

But Dirk was already lifting the puppet and moving it to speak in a high voice, “I’m Ferret Slack, master of kung fu and the cheapest millionaire you’ll ever meet!”

For a second Farah just stared at Dirk in surprise. 

Todd’s face was glowing red and he stammered out a quick, “ _Ohmygod_ , Dirk.”

The next moment, though, Farah’s lips twitched with a smile. Then she was laughing, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as she pointed at Todd, her glee apparent on her face, “ _Todd_!” she waved her hand at Dirk, “Did you come up with that?”

“Isn’t it great?” Dirk said, bobbing on his heels. He raised his eyebrows at Todd, “He named mine ‘Dork Greatly’.” 

Farah nearly choked at the name, looking at Todd expectantly, “What were you saying about Dork Greatly?” she asked, her eyes sparking with barely contained laughter.

Todd bit his lower lip as if to contain the smile sneaking onto his face and went fishing into the basket for the sock he had been using. “It won’t be as good as before, so bear with me,” he looked up with a smirk, saying, “I might have to come up with some new material.”

Dirk beamed, “Excellent!”

Eventually, Farah grabbed her own sock and started imitating both of them. She actually managed to make her voice crack while imitating “Todger”, which made the actual Todd fall back on the couch clutching his ribs to say something which none of them _actually_ remembered because his voice had properly cracked while saying it and the rest just fell away in a fit of giggling. Her “Dork” impression was something to be admired, though, and not just because her British accent was better than Todd’s was.

By the time the laundry had _finally_ been folded, Dirk’s face hurt from too much smiling and, when he glanced over to where Todd was collecting up and putting away cleaning supplies in the kitchen, he was glad to see that his best friend was grinning, too.

And Dirk, despite his smile-sore dimples, allowed the fluttery sort of soft feelings in his chest to tilt the corners of his lips upwards…

It was a good day. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! ^_^ If you enjoyed it please consider leaving a comment or kudos, every little thing is appreciated! (I frame comments and put them on my refrigerator. True Story.)


End file.
